A Man, A Bear, And A Monster
by No Guns Only Roses
Summary: Kenai tells Koda a story about a monster and a little bear who touched his heart. One-shot based on the alternate version of the confession scene in the movie.


**I absolutely LOVE "Brother Bear", one of my favorite movies of all time. I remember watching the deleted scenes on DVD and this particular one would always tug at my heartstrings. I mean, seriously, this scene should've stayed in the final cut. It's just so powerful and heartbreaking. So I've decided to do a "Brother Bear" one-shot based on the alternate confession scene. **

**NOTE: There will probably be grammar mistakes that I will fix later.**

He spent the whole night on the cliff, but he didn't sleep. He _couldn't_ sleep. How could you sleep after you've learned that you hurt someone so close to you?

Down by the salmon run, Koda was still waiting for his mother to return, but Kenai knew the horrible truth: his mother was not coming because a monster selfishly killed her. And that same monster was the bear who he thought was his brother.

Koda trusted him more than anyone and absolutely adored him. Kenai chuckled bitterly to himself as he looked back on his own childhood. He used to feel the same admiration toward Sitka, always following him around and imitating everything he did because he wanted to be just like his big brother. And he could still see the look of disappointment and sadness on Sitka's face after he killed the bear.

He didn't understand it at the time, but he had destroyed the life of an innocent young cub who was more human than he ever was and could ever be. Even if Sitka did change him back, he'd still have the blood of Koda's mother on his hands, the same hands he wanted to mark the ancestral walls with, and he'd come back to the village not as a man, but as a monster.

He sighed deeply. He knew that he needed to tell Koda the truth; the cub deserved to know. But it would be the hardest thing he had ever done.

"RAAAAHHH!"

Koda jumped onto his back giggling. "Scared ya again, huh?"

Kenai was too depressed to get scared. Lightning could strike him and he probably wouldn't even flinch. He just shrugged and chuckled weakly. "Yeah."

"Where have you been?" the cub asked as he noticed the bags under the older bear's tired eyes. "You look horrible!"

Kenai slowly sat up. "Koda..."

Koda climbed off his back and sat down next to him. "My mom says when you eat too much fish, you should just lie down."

At the mention of Koda's mother, Kenai's throat became tight, but he had to tell the cub. "Koda, there's something I, uh..." How could he even _begin_ to tell him? "Y-You know that story you told me last night?"

Koda looked up at him with a smile. "Yeah?"

"Well, I-I have a story to tell you."

"Really?" Koda picked a few berries off a small bush and handed some to Kenai. "What's it about?"

Kenai just dropped his berries, having lost his appetite. "Well, it's kind of about a man, and kind of about a bear, but...mostly it's about a monster."

Koda's ears perked up at the word "monster" and he stopped munching on his berries. He looked up at Kenai, eager to hear this story.

"A monster who did something so bad that the Great Spirits came down." Kenai lifted his head and paw to the pink morning sky. "There was all this wind and-and lights and they pulled him up way-way up into the sky. And when he came down again, he'd been changed into a bear."

"Whoa!" Koda said in awe, his eyes twinkling with wonder.

"Yeah. Only he didn't know anything about being a bear. How to walk, how to drink, how to fish..."

Koda grinned, seeing the similarity between Kenai and the bear in the story. "Just like YOU!" he laughed as he jumped onto Kenai's belly.

"Yeah," Kenai smiled a little. He held the cub close and began to lovingly stroke his head. "But lucky for him, he met this little bear who showed him how to do all those things, and...well, a lot more." He glanced at the river below, the rising sun reflecting off the shimmering waters. "A bear he'd do anything more. A bear that was like, um...like a-"

"A brother?"

He felt a small pair of arms wrap around him in a hug and looked down at Koda. The cub was nuzzling him and had such a blissful look on his face. He felt safe and secure in Kenai's arms, like nothing could hurt him as long as he was with his big brother.

Kenai's eyes burned as the tears came. He remembered what he told Sitka the day he died, _"Come on, the Bear of Love? I mean, a bear doesn't love anyone. They don't think. They don't feel."_

He gently picked Koda up and sat him down, but he couldn't look him in the eye and turned his back to him.

Koda looked at him confused. Something was troubling his brother and he wished he knew what. "Kenai?"

"Koda, I did something very wrong," Kenai said with so much sadness in his voice.

"What'd you do, Kenai?" the cub softly asked, touching Kenai's back with his paw.

"I..." Kenai squeezed his eyes shut as he forced himself to confess his sin. "I killed a bear."

Koda gasped and retracted his paw.

Suddenly it all made sense. When he first met Kenai, the older bear knew so little about the wilderness and yet he knew so much about the human world, and he was so determined to reach where the lights touched the Earth but wouldn't explain why. He thought it was just because Kenai was weird, but now he knew the whole truth.

The bear in the story and the bear sitting in front of him were one and the same.

Koda swallowed around a lump in his throat. He had been traveling, sleeping, and playing with a monster all this time and he never even knew it. It all felt like a bad dream. "I..."

Kenai turned around and looked at him with so much guilt and remorse. "Koda..." he whispered tearfully.

"I don't like this story," Koda cowered away a bit.

And then Kenai choked out, "Koda, your mother's not coming."

At those words, Koda felt his whole world crumble and fall apart. The bad dream just turned into his worst nightmare. He wished that he would wake up in a nice, warm cave next to his mother, and she'd comfort and nuzzle him like before. But as the snowflakes started to fall and the cold winter air blew up into the mountains, he realized that he truly was alone in the world and began to cry.

"No..." he whimpered.

"I didn't know, Koda," Kenai explained, though that was hardly an excuse for what he did.

A tear rolled down Koda's cheek. "No...!"

The sight of Koda crying killed him inside and he started to walk toward the cub. "I swear I didn't know!" he begged.

But Koda wouldn't listen and he sprinted into the forest in tears.

"KODA!" Kenai cried as he ran after his little brother.


End file.
